Suzanne Barber

CityLore, 2010

I did my internship in New York City at Citylore, specifically working on their City
of Memory site. My main responsibility was to edit together severel tours, including
one based on an Indo-Carribean neighborhood, the Mohawk Indian steel workers, and
a Chinese-American neighborhood in Flushing, Queens. I also filmed some supplementary
footage for the tours that I put together. In addition to my work with the City of
Memory site, I also attended the New York State Folklorist's Folk Art Roundtable in
Saratoga Springs, New York. There I was able to meet with and discuss topics pertinent
to public folklore with some notable folklorists that I may not otherwise had the
chance to talk to.

This internship, as a whole, challenged my media capabilities while allowing me to
engage in the dialogue of representation and entitlement that is so central to public
work and folklore as a whole. I feel privileged to have made the connections that
I made and to have tangible products that I can show future schools and employers.
Although there were certainly difficult and uncomfortable times during my work in
New York, this too, was an informative look at the reality of public folklore work
and allowed me to gain problem solving skills that I can use later in my career.